Shell Shock
My grandfather was a kind, generous man. He was the type of grandfather who would slip you a sweet or a biscuit after your parents had already said no, with a quick wink and a finger to his lip. The kind of old man who’d roll up his sleeves and get stuck in helping your dad fix the car or put some shelves up, even well into his 80’s. A slight stoop, a shock of white hair, and deep throaty laugh are the things I remember most clearly about him. That and his penchant for smartness. You never saw him without a shirt and tie, a sports jacket or suit, and braces rather than a belt holding up his trousers. Just occasionally, he’d freeze up. I don’t really remember when I first noticed it, and it was really bizarre. One minute he’d be chatting away happily to my mum and Grandmother, a mug of steaming tea in his hand, and the next he’d just stop, frozen in time, as his eyes glazed over. Even more weirdly, the conversation would continue to flow around him, as if nothing had happened. A few minutes later, maybe up to half an hour, he’d unfreeze and rejoin the conversation, his tea now cold and forgotten. He drank a lot of cold cups of tea. I asked my mother about this once, and she told me that sometimes Grandad froze up because of what he had seen in the army, and that it was a medical condition known as ‘Shell Shock’. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time, but it seemed a suitable answer to my young, inquisitive mind, and I perused it no further. Like many of his generation, he’d been to war. He didn’t talk about it much, but I remember once seeing his medals in a drawer, tarnished and gathering dust, and I wondered why he didn’t take better care of them. I found out later, that like many young, idealistic men he’d volunteered in the summer of 1914, and been sent out to France as part of one of the new Service Battalions two years later. In time for the great reaping of souls known as the Battle of the Somme. I snuck in once, years later, and pulled out the medals so that I could take a look at them. There were three: A bronze star with two swords across it, a silver one and a gold one. There was also a dull bronze strip, about two inches long, but very thin. I wondered what the medals were for, and as this was the days before Google, I had to go down to the library to look them up. The librarian recommended a stuffy old tome, with dull black and white pictures, but it depicted quite clearly the medals I’d seen in my grandfather’s drawer. According to the book, they were the British War Medal, the British Victory Medal and the 1914 Star, irreverently referred to as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, the standard campaign medals awarded to most British servicemen serving from 1914. I found myself slightly disappointed that they were not issued for some heroic deed, but I still wondered why he’d shoved them in a drawer and forgotten about them. Then I remembered the bronze strip and flicked through the book in the hopes of finding an illustration. Sure enough there was a picture of a similar strip. According to the book, this was a wound stripe, awarded to soldiers who’d suffered an injury in battle. Suddenly it all made a lot more sense, and I realised why he didn’t like to talk about it with us. It also made sense why he’d occasionally freeze up, I assumed it must just be to do with the wound. My curiosity satisfied, I left the matter and soon forgot all about it. That Christmas, because I was 16, my dad let me have a few drinks with Christmas dinner, and afterwards the men sat round the table with a glass of port and a cigar, and told jokes, talked about world affairs and generally enjoyed themselves. This was the first time I’d been invited to stay and it felt like a real privilege – being treated like one of the men. My mother, grandmother and aunts left to chat in the kitchen and wash up, whilst my sister and cousins went into the lounge to play with their new toys. We chatted, joked, swore and laughed, having a great time just being men, no wives or kids within earshot. I really felt I was really part of something. Uncle Bob had just finished telling a risqué joke about a barmaid when Grandad spoke up, “When I was in the War…” We all turned to him, our laughter subsiding, prepared to listen to what he had to say. I learned later that after a few drinks he’d occasionally start reminiscing about his war days, but never when Grandma or any of the kids were around. They were usually about some of the pranks they’d played on the sergeant, or a drunken night on leave. This story was not like those. “One night the sergeant told us we were going on a night raid. Usual business, up, over the parapet after dusk, quick recce of the enemy lines, and maybe snatch a sentry for interrogation and unit identification. The Brass always wanted to know who we were facing, as if it was a new unit, or a reserve one it might be worth planning an attack. I got tooled up with the rest of the lads; rifles, bayonets and some ammo in pockets only – none of our usual marching kit, as it might get snagged on the wire or make a sound and give us away. I was the No.1 on the Lewis gun, a big heavy bugger, far too unwieldly to take on a raid, so I was just carrying my Webley revolver and a trench club I’d made by hammering hobnails into an axe handle.” The thought of this made me feel slightly queasy, as I’d seen photos of trench clubs in the library book. Evil-looking blunt instruments, with vicious spikes. It’s difficult to contemplate how someone as kind and gentle as my grandfather could have made one of these for the express purpose of breaking bones and caving in skulls. “We went forward through the churned earth, past the corpses of jerry’s last attack. I remember my mate Harry slipped on some poor bugger’s entrails, and swore under his breath. The sergeant gave him a properly dark look for making a noise, and we all smiled thinking about the bollocking he’d get when he got back to our lines. We were all shitting ourselves with fear, you always did when you went out on a raid, so anything seemed funny at that point. When you see your mates die every day, when a shell, a bullet or a bomb could kill you at any moment you learn to live with fear, you get used to it. But stepping out onto no-man's land, that’s another fear all together. You feel naked, alone in the universe, and it feels like every sniper in the German army is drawing a bead on you, ready to blow your head off. It’s enough to drive a man mad.” All talk had ceased round the table at this point, everyone was listening in, enraptured by my grandfather speaking. He didn’t sound like an old man anymore, the passion in his voice was the clear tones of a younger man. He was staring into the middle distance as he spoke. He’d frozen up earlier in the day, when my sister had squealed when she’d received a new Bunty annual. His face was the same now, except for his mouth moving as he spoke. “This time it was even worse, we all felt it. A cold fog had rolled in over no-mans-land, which any other time would seem like a blessing as it masked our movements from Jerry, but that night it seemed ominous, malevolent. We kept moving forward, we couldn’t see the enemy lines through the fog, but we knew they were close, so we kept low and slow. As we moved up I began to see a shape emerge from the fog. The sergeant saw it too and waved us down into a holding pattern. We all drew a bead on the shape. After a few moments we got the nod and began to move up. As we got closer we began to make out the shape of a man. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, just standing alone, staring at us. I’m not prone to superstition, but it was bloody creepy. I looked at the Sarge and he nodded to me. ‘Fuck,’ I thought, ‘I’ve got to investigate’. I stepped closer and began to make out a little more. He was in a Jerry uniform, with one of the old spiked helmets still on his head. I began to make out the features on his face, and I could swear the bugger was smiling at me. I took another step and felt something shift under my feet. I nearly pissed myself. I daren’t look down to see what it was as I didn’t want to take my eyes off what was in front of me. Another step closer, gripping my weapons with white knuckles, I suddenly noticed it. I nearly laughed out loud as the tension drifted away. He was hanging up on barbed wire, caught up in the entanglements and dead as a doorknob. I’d heard the tales of this from some of the old sweats, men getting so entangled when they died that the wire kept them standing up. Feeling completely relieved, I carried on towards him. In my giddy state, I figured that the helmet would make a good souvenir, after all this poor sod didn’t need it any more. As I grabbed the spike, the head fell back…” He trailed away, and for a moment we thought he was having one of his moments, but then he looked directly at me, focusing for the first time, and I felt dread clawing up my spine. ‘He didn’t have any eyes. Just two gaping holes as if they’d been ripped out by something. Or someone. His mouth was twisted in a rictus grin, as if he was involved in some macabre joke. I felt the courage of a moment before drain out of me, and I dropped the helmet, which clattered on the ground. I’d seen a lot of bodies by this point, some of them close friends, but something about this one seemed different. Wrong. The feeling of being watched crept over me again, and I wondered if this was some new and evil trap the bastards had set up for us. I wanted to crawl up into a ball and hide, but I couldn’t let my mates down. I turned around to see where they were, but the fog was thicker now and I couldn’t see them anymore. I had to find them, let the Sergeant know what I’d seen, so I began making my way back towards them. I looked back occasionally, a sixth sense not wanting me to look away from the corpse behind me.” By this point Grandad was staring back into the middle distance again. I glanced at my father, but the look on his face told me this was a tale he hadn’t heard before, and the colour had drained from his face. “I’d moved about 20 yards when I realised I should have come across them by now. I looked back, but the corpse had disappeared back into the fog. I was alone. I assumed that the Sergeant had decided to call off the raid as the fog had gotten worse, and that they’d left me behind. Anger at being abandoned overcame my fear at this point, so I strode forward, determined to get back to our lines. I saw a shape ahead of me, and assumed it was the rearguard of the unit, so I redoubled my pace, hoping to catch him up. As I moved closer, I realised he wasn’t moving, and was instead hung up on the wire. With a sigh of frustration, I assumed I had been turned around in the fog and somehow made my back to the corpse I’d seen earlier. I resolved to go and grab the helmet, so I’d at least have something to show for this whole mess, but as I approached I began to feel that same sense of deep unease that I had before. As I got closer, I realised why I was feeling so uncomfortable. "It was a different man. "Same pose, same sightless grin. But this man wasn’t the German I’d seen before, he was wearing a British uniform. I vomited, not because it was dead, not because the blood seeping from the eyesockets was fresh, but because it wasn’t just any body. It was my friend Harry. "I felt sick. Harry had been on the patrol with us. How could he now be strung up on the wire like this? I tried to pull the fat, rusty strands of wire off him, but all I succeeded in doing was tearing my hands. My club and revolver were useless, and I wished I had some wire cutters or even a knife. I fell at his feet and I wept. I had no idea where our lines were in the fog and I was helpless to do anything for my friend. As I lay there, tears streaming down my face, I heard a shrill scream which chilled me to the bone. I was frozen in place, terror overtaking all other feelings. I could have been there for hours or minutes, I couldn’t tell. Then I heard the scream again and this time it triggered something in my brain. I got up and just ran. I didn’t care anymore, I’d prefer a Jerry bullet in my brain than let whatever was out there catch me. I felt like I ran for hours, stumbling over the shell holes and detritus of no-mans-land. Eventually I heard an English voice call out. I called back that I was a friend, and stumbled into the front line trench. I was battered, bloodied and worn from the wire and detritus I’d collided with on my run. But I’d never felt so safe in a front line trench in all my life. "I was the only man from my unit to ever return.” Grandad paused for a moment, long enough that we all looked at each other, wondering if the story was over. It had grown overcast outside, and it felt cold in the dining room, despite the fire crackling in the grate. The pause lasted so long, I was desperate for someone to break the silence. Just as it looked like Uncle Bob would break the spell, Grandad spoke again. “Two weeks later we mounted an attack on the same sector. I took a round in my shoulder in the confusion, and lay in a shell hole for a day before the stretcher bearers found me. Apparently I’d lost a lot of blood and was swimming in and out of consciousness. When I came to, I had a hole in my shoulder, a bit of brass to say I’d been wounded in combat, and this.” He pointed to a faded, white scar above his left eye. “Something had tried to gouge out my eye.” Part 2 I never forgot the story my grandfather told me about his night lost in No Man’s Land, and the horrors he witnessed there. He never spoke about it again, and although over the next few years, after a few drinks late in the winter evenings Uncle Bob tried to ask him about it he’d always refuse. The last time Uncle Bob asked, the room went quiet and suddenly felt very cold. Grandad’s gaze went dead, in exactly the same way as it would when he froze up. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t ask me again.” he said very quietly. Conversation was stilted for the rest of the evening, and eventually he left in an awkward silence. Nobody, not even Uncle Bob, ever asked him about it again. I was 19 when my Grandad passed away. I was a year into my University course, the first member of my family ever to go, and I felt the weight of expectation on my shoulders. Especially from my Grandad, who’d been over the moon when I told him I’d been accepted. “They probably got you confused with a smarter nipper with the same name” he joked, but you could see how proud he was. It meant so much to him that one of his grandchildren had managed to get so far academically – he’d left school when he was 12 he used to tell us, to apprentice as a riveter in a shipyard. My first year hadn’t been too bad, I’d enjoyed myself, made friends, got drunk and met girls. My course was good too, the first year hadn’t been as hard as I was expecting, but now the second year had kicked in, and the workload was starting to rise. Still, studying history wasn’t a hardship for me, as I’d enjoyed it ever since researching my Grandad’s medals when I was younger. There was something captivating about flipping through dusty old tomes, hunting for evidence, like some kind of historical detective. The news he’d died hit me hard. My Dad worked long hours at the post office, and my mum was always busy with cooking, cleaning and looking after my younger sister so I’d spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was growing up. He used to tell me long elaborate bedtime stories, about King Arthur, knights and dragons. He’d helped nurture my love of history, buying me books about Ancient Rome and Egypt. Looking back, they must have cost him a sizable chunk of his pension. The funeral itself was a sombre affair. The family were all there, and I read a heartfelt eulogy, which everyone said was very moving, but in truth I just felt empty. I couldn’t cry, I just couldn’t feel anything. It was like my emotions had just shut down. A few month later I was back at university studying for an essay. I’d picked a module on the First World War, partly as a tribute to my Grandad, and partly because I’d done a lot of reading around it before and I thought it would be an easy credit. It wasn’t. The Professor was a real hardass, and with Grandad now passed away, a lot of the pictures and accounts somehow struck closer to home. He lived through this, I remember thinking as I leafed through a hefty pictorial history of the war. Then I saw an image which stopped me in my tracks. It was of a soldier being crucified. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and in my mind I was suddenly back in the room at Christmas with Grandad telling his story. Soldiers hung up on barbed wire as if crucified. And their eyes had been gouged out. I started to feel deeply uneasy, I was working by the light of a desk lamp and the shadows of my darkened room began to feel threatening. My eyes darted to the text below. Apparently an officer of the Canadian Corps was seen by three witnesses crucified to a tree with bayonets in April of 1915, but there was no conclusive proof such a crucifixion actually occurred. The eyewitness accounts were somewhat contradictory and no crucified body was found. I read further, but the text then went on about other British and American propaganda and there was no mention about the officer’s eyes. Perhaps this was a coincidence, I thought, or it was just a rumour, or pure propaganda to make the Germans out to be monsters. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking back to the fear in my Grandad’s eyes as he told us the tale. The darkness in my room felt malevolent, as I played the story over and over in my head. Over the next few weeks I pretty much read through every book in the Library about the First World War, looking for more information about crucified soldiers. I neglected my friends and my coursework, I was utterly single minded. I had to find out more. However, although I found plenty of references to the crucified Canadian, it was all in the form of propaganda, and I could find nothing about any other cases. Dejected, I went back to working on my lacklustre essay and handed it in. I didn’t do very well on the essay at all, it was clear my heart wasn’t in it, and my Professor asked me to come in to talk about it. I wasn’t very forthcoming, and I could tell he was becoming frustrated with me. “You’re a good historian, but this last essay was very poor. Your references were all over the place, and your argument was very weak and full of missed opportunities.” He was saying. I merely nodded, and mumbled something about not being confident. “It’s not about confidence,” he said, “It’s just about reading the sources – You should have known all of this if you’d done the reading.” “I did the reading!” I retorted, “I just got distracted by something else.” And I just thought ‘screw it’ and told him about the crucified Canadian, and that my Grandad had seen something similar. I didn’t tell him the full story though. He went very quiet and stared at me for a moment. Then he turned and began digging through some papers behind him. I waited for a second, he didn’t say anything, so I got up and turned to leave, annoyed that he’d dismissed me in such a rude way. “Wait!” he said, and I turned. He had a stack of handwritten paper stapled together in the top left corner. He handed it to me. “Read this.” He said, “And I want to see a marked improvement on your next essay” I left, confused, and went back to my student house. Once in my room I looked at the sheaf of yellowing paper the Professor had given me. The first page was in German. I laughed. The old prick was getting on at me for not reading primary sources, and it was obviously his way of saying I should learn German so I could read more about both sides. I very nearly threw it in the bin, but as I picked it up I noticed that the back page was in English. I took it to my desk and as I looked through, I realised it was a transcript of an interview in German, which had then been translated into English. I began to read, and as I did so a chill began to run down my spine. I’ve copied the English translation below. Interview with Gunter Muller, former Gefreiter, Königlich Bayerisches 17. Infanterie-Regiment Regarding a counterattack somewhere in the Somme region, late June 1916. “As we charged forward a shell must have gone off near me, as I was stunned and thrown to the ground. I don’t know how much time had passed when I came to, but I had dirt in my eyes and mouth, and a pain in my right leg. The din of battle was still around, I remember the ground shaking with concussive blasts, the chatter of machine-guns and the bark of rifle fire. '' I tried to move, but the pain in my leg was intense. I wiped some of the dirt out of my eyes and looked down, blood was welling up and staining my field-grey trousers in a few places. It didn’t look life threatening, but my leg spasmed with pain every time I tried to move it. I felt exposed and very alone. I couldn’t find my helmet, and looking around, my rifle had been shredded by the blast and was now little better than kindling. I realised I had been thrown into an abandoned trench, now somewhere in the middle of No Man’s Land. I was unarmed, and injured so I needed to get back to my own lines, but I was in no fit state to make it back in daylight. There was another man from my unit lying nearby, but he was dead.” The interviewer asks how he knew he was dead “He was missing half his head. Shrapnel wounds are horrific. They don’t put pictures of them in the history books. Much better to be shot with a bullet than torn up by a shell. '' I looked around the trench to see if there was somewhere I could hole up until the evening and either the stretcher-bearers found me or I could crawl back to my own lines. The trench had been shelled heavily, and the wood supporting the sides had been badly broken up. It looked like one of ours too, as despite the destruction, the underlying workmanship was much better than the English and French trenches.'' One large piece of corrugated iron had fallen down and was resting on the duckboards and the parapet wall, but from where I was lying there looked to be darkness behind it. I crawled over to it, dragging my leg behind me, and grabbed the corrugated sheet. To my surprise, it moved easily. Behind it was what I had been hoping for, the entrance to a dugout. I hoped it hadn’t been bombed into oblivion by shelling, and that I could lay low in there until nightfall. I wish now I had braved the crawl back to my own lines and never stayed in that godforsaken pit. But in my naivety I thought I would be safe. I began the crawl under the iron and down the wooden steps. They were intact, the iron sheet must have given them some protection from shrapnel. It was pitch black down the bottom, and despite the warmth of the June day, as I carefully crawled down the steps the temperature cooled and the air felt damp. I could still feel the earth rumbling from the bombardment, but the other sounds of battle faded the lower I got. It took my eyes some time to adjust to the blackness of the dugout. When they did, I nearly jumped out of my skin. There was a man sat in the dark looking at me. I panicked and immediately raised my hands to show I was unarmed, but he just sat staring. I was sweating and paralysed with fear. My eyes continued to adjust to the blackness, and I realised, with a wave of relief that he was dead. He must have been that way for a while as his skin was stretched taught over his skull, and he had no eyes. Perhaps the rats had gotten to him. I was quite used to seeing death at this point. I think they call it desensitised. He was sat against a desk, and by the looks of things this had been an officers dugout, there were some home comforts I could make out in the gloom, and even a gramophone on a table in the corner. I could see no other bodies, alive or dead in there, and I remember it striking me as odd that he was still sat so upright, even in death. I used the table to pull myself up, taking my weight on my good leg. As I did so I felt something on the table and picked it up. It was a Dreyse pistol, an officers weapon. Not as common as the Luger, but I’d seen one before. I extracted the clip and saw it was still loaded, so I tucked the gun into my leather belt at the front. I wasn’t confident it would fire, but I could at least threaten someone with it, and it made me feel less naked. As I said I was used to seeing death, but if I was going to be in here for some time I didn’t want a dead officer staring at me all day, so I decided to try and slide him off the chair and into the corner. I gingerly made my way round to him, using the table to take some of my weight as my injured leg was throbbing. I tried to push him off the chair, but although his head lolled, he didn’t budge. That’s when I noticed it. He'd been bound to the chair with barbed wire. I should have gotten out of there right then. Taken my chances with the guns and shells of No Man’s Land. But I didn’t. I think part of me thought maybe it was the scene of a mutiny or something. They’d tied an unpopular officer up and left him. It seems callous, but by then I’d served under some truly terrible commanders who would have deserved this or worse. Maybe shelling had dropped the corrugated iron over the entrance, so no-one had come down here looking and he’d starved to death alone, his dugout becoming his tomb. I pushed harder, and this time the chair toppled over and the corpse hit the floor with a sickening thud. I nearly overbalanced myself as it tipped, and I put some weight on my injured leg and nearly screamed out in pain. I half-fell onto what would have been the officer’s cot and lay there for a moment as agony coursed through me. The pain eventually subsided, and I lay in the cot thinking of home. At some point I must have drifted off to sleep. When I awoke it was with a start. I lay there, eyes wide listening intently. The events of the day rushed back to me. Something had woken me, the hairs on the back of my neck were up, and I had this enormous feeling of dread inside me. Some animal instinct was telling me that something was very, very wrong. '' ''That I wasn’t alone. '' I glanced over at the officer’s corpse, but it was still slumped in the corner bound to the chair. I drew the pistol from my belt and racked back the slide. The trace of light coming down the stairs was no longer there, I realised I must have slept until dark. The sounds of battle from earlier, and the rumbling of the earth had stopped. I got up carefully off the cot, my injured leg protesting as I carefully set it down and moved over to behind the table. I kept my gun trained on the door, expecting a Tommy to come bursting through at any moment. My senses were on overload, my hobnails crunching on the rotten wood of the floor seemed as loud as gunshots. I could hear something faintly outside, like movement in the trench above me. My mind was racing. A patrol above me perhaps, investigating this old trench? Where they my side or theirs? Would they find me down here? Would they check – or would they throw a grenade down first?'' I was terrified, but I felt the urge to find out. If they were my side, they could maybe help me back to our lines. If they were Tommies, at least I would know, and I could attempt to hide until they moved on. I resolved to carefully make my way up the steps, and peek out under the corrugated iron. It was a lot more difficult than I imagined. I was trying to keep the pistol pointed ahead of me, drag my injured leg up and make as little noise as possible. It seemed to take a lifetime, and each time my leg hit a step it was agony. Finally I reached the top step and peered out into the darkness. There was someone moving out there. My heart was beating so fast I could hear the blood pumping in my ears. He had his back to me and seemed to be bent over, doing something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. There was something wrong though, he didn’t look right” It was difficult to read the next bit, it looked as though the interviewer was trying to prompt Gunter for more. “I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t think I could quite process what I was seeing. His movements were wrong… his arms were elongated, like a chimp. His head was moving in a strange jerking motion. I must have made a sound, or perhaps it sensed it was being watched because it suddenly stopped, and its head whipped round. It wasn’t human. It looked like it might have been at one stage, but the proportions were all wrong. Its eyes were too big, it’s face sunken, and it’s limbs too long and too thin. I can’t describe it, but years later when I read Tolkien it sounded exactly the way he described Gollum. Exactly. I know he fought for the British on the Somme, so maybe he saw it too. Or something like it. '' I tried not to gasp at it, but I must have made some noise, as its darting too-big eyes stared straight at me. Then it moved, unnaturally quickly and almost feline-like towards me. The Dreyse pistol barked in my hand, and the bullet – more by luck than my aim hit it in the chest. It jerked back, and let out the most blood curdling scream I have ever heard. I still hear it in my nightmares. The thing turned and scurried on all fours up the parapet of the trench and out into No Man’s Land. I was almost paralysed with fear, and I stayed still, gun pointing at where it had left the trench. After what seemed like an age, it didn’t seem to be coming back, so I moved cautiously out into the trench. Once I did I could finally see what it had been doing. It had been tying my dead comrade up with barbed wire. He was spread eagled over a crude cross made of two rotting duckboards, his shell damaged head lolling at an unnatural angle, his hands pierced through with bayonets, and his wrists bound by wire. His legs were still loose, I guess I interrupted that thing before it had finished. I’d seen a lot of horror in this war, but right then and there I was just overwhelmed, and I vomited. As I looked back up at the unnaturally hanging head I noticed something. He was missing half his face from the explosion earlier, but something had changed. His remaining eye had been gouged out.” I felt a shiver down my spine as I read that last line. The rest of the account dealt with his escape from the trench and the journey back to his own lines, and there was no further mention of the creature. I put the text down on my bed. My head was spinning. Corroboration of what my grandad had seen. Something taking eyes. A creature living in No Man’s Land. And Tolkien may have seen one? I’d only recently re-read the Lord of the Rings. Perhaps there were more accounts out there? It’s been 30 years, and although I’ve found a few other references, hints perhaps at something out there between the trenches, I’ve never found anything like the accounts of my Grandad and Gunter Muller. But I know my Grandad was telling the truth. And I’m still looking.Category:Beings Category:Military Category:History